Dr. Geeta Shroff is an Indian physician who is running a New Delhi clinic offering embryonic stem cell therapies for a large number of various medical conditions. The only thing these medical conditions have in common is that they are incurable. Indian law allows for the use of unproven treatments for terminal or incurable diseases. I cannot know Dr. Shroff’s intentions, but she has rejected the ethics and standards of science-based medicine and in so doing has transformed herself into a dangerous charlatan.

Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy

Embryonic Stem Cells (ESC) are controversial because of the ethical and moral consideration regarding harvesting ESC and the rights of an embryo. But that is not what makes Dr. Shroff’s treatments controversial, and not what I am going to write about here. The question, rather, is the state of the science of ESC therapy.

ESC’s are scientifically interesting because they have the potential to turn into any type of cell in the body. The hope for ESC therapy is that they can be used to replace dead or abnormal tissue in the body, something which is not now possible for many conditions. (Organ and bone marrow transplants are among the current treatments to replace failing tissue.) For example, an injured spinal cord might be repaired by using ESC’s to replace the damaged motor neurons and reestablish a connection between the brain and muscles. Atrophied muscles themselves can be repaired by having ESC’s turn into working muscle cells.